How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God

How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God and the Bible

This epic, thrilling journey through Bible scholarship and ancient religion shows how much of Scripture is historically false--yet the ancient writings also resound with theologies that crisscrossed the primeval world and that direct us today toward a deep, inner, authentic experience of the truly sacred.

From a historical perspective, the Bible is shockingly, provably wrong--a point supported by today's best archaeological and historical scholarship but not well understood by (or communicated to) the public. Yet this emphatically does not mean that the Bible isn't, in some very real measure, true, argues scholar of mysticism Richard Smoley.

Smoley reviews the most authoritative historical evidence to demonstrate that figures such as Moses, Abraham, and Jesus are not only unlikely to have existed, but bear strong composite resemblances to other Near Eastern religious icons. Likewise, the geopolitical and military events of Scripture fail to mesh with the largely settled historical time line and social structures. Smoley meticulously shows how our concepts of the Hebrew and Christian God, including Christ himself, are an assemblage of ideas that were altered, argued over, and edited--until their canonization. This process, to a large degree, gave Western civilization its consensus view of God.

But these conclusions are not cause for nihilism or disbelief. Rather, beneath the metaphorical figures and mythical historicism of Scripture appears an extraordinary, truly transcendent theology born from the most sacred and fully realized spiritual and human insights of the antique Eastern world. Far from being "untrue," the Bible is remarkably, extraordinarily true as it connects us to the sublime insights of our ancient ancestors and points to a unifying ethic behind many of the world's faiths.
Country USA
Brand Tarcher
Manufacturer TarcherPerigee
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 0399185550_used
Model 0399185550_used
Color Cream
ReleaseDate 2016-06-07
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780399185557

Country	USA
Brand	Tarcher
Manufacturer	TarcherPerigee
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	0399185550_used
Model	0399185550_used
Color	Cream
ReleaseDate	2016-06-07
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
EANs	9780399185557

How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God and the Bible

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